Fed chair Powell signals potential rate cuts — but Trump says it’s ‘too late’



Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled on Friday that he may consider cutting interest rates in the near future.

During a speech at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell hinted at the possibility of changes to interest rates at the next September meeting due to a "shifting balance of risks."

'I personally believe the Fed could cut a full percent and still not have policy unleash inflationary pressures, but I don't foresee a cut that substantial in September.'

He contended that the Federal Reserve's "restrictive policy stance" has been "appropriate to help bring down inflation and to foster a sustainable balance between aggregate demand and supply."

Powell blamed "higher tariffs" for introducing "new challenges" to the U.S. economy and "tighter immigration policy" for causing an "abrupt slowdown in labor force growth." He contended that both factors have impacted demand and supply.

"Over the longer run, changes in tax, spending, and regulatory policies may also have important implications for economic growth and productivity," Powell claimed. "There is significant uncertainty about where all of these policies will eventually settle and what their lasting effects on the economy will be."

RELATED: Powell’s tight money policy is strangling the US economy

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

He argued that "risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside." Powell called it a "challenging situation" given that the Fed's "framework calls for us to balance both sides of our dual mandate," referring to the labor market and price stability.

However, he indicated that with the policy rate "100 basis points closer to neutral" compared to last year and stability in labor market measures, the Federal Reserve may "proceed carefully as we consider changes to our policy stance."

"Nonetheless, with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance," Powell said.

RELATED: Trump orders Labor Statistics chief to be fired over revisions in weak jobs report

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Powell to drop interest rates.

"He should have cut them a year ago. He's too late," Trump said Friday afternoon in response to Powell's speech.

Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth told Blaze News, "Reading between the lines, it certainly sounded like Powell was signaling a higher likelihood of a September rate cut, something that the market had already been expecting. In terms of the Fed's stated 'dual mandate,' the pendulum seems to be swinging to more concern over the labor market than inflation, although certainly not ignoring inflation, but rather wanting to avoid a stagflation scenario," Roth said.

"Powell is definitely late to a rate cut, both in terms of supporting the economy and giving the Fed room in terms of future ability to raise rates in the face of any potential spikes in inflation," Roth continued. "While 25 basis points (one quarter of a percent) is the likely size of a cut, it probably isn't enough to be meaningful in terms of consumer or business behavior — it seems more symbolic. I personally believe the Fed could cut a full percent and still not have policy unleash inflationary pressures, but I don't foresee a cut that substantial in September."

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Powell’s tight money policy is strangling the US economy



Two days after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced the central bank’s decision not to reduce interest rates, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported scathingly bad news about the U.S. economy.

Employers added much fewer jobs than expected in July, revised numbers showed that employment and hiring were weak in May and June, and the unemployment rate ticked up again in July, reaching 4.2%.

Powell and the Fed have been doing their best to stunt economic growth — and they are succeeding.

Although Powell refuses to admit it, the Fed’s tight money policy is crushing economic growth.

In an impressive “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment, Powell said on Wednesday that the Fed was not ready to lower interest rates, citing low unemployment and inflation slightly above the Fed’s stated goal of 2%. Despite the Fed having lowered its target interest rate three times last fall to its current level — even though inflation remained “somewhat elevated” at the time, as the Fed put it — the Fed seems to have changed its tune under the Trump administration.

Friday’s numbers destroyed Powell’s explanation. The 73,000 new jobs in July were far below the 110,000 that economists had expected. In addition, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cut the reported job-creation totals for May and June from a healthy 291,000 to a dismal 33,000.

The economy has clearly been wobbly since January 2021 brought the tax-spend-borrow strategy that created the Biden-era fiscal disaster. The Fed caused the 2020s inflation by monetizing the Biden administration’s massive, irresponsible increase in the federal deficit and debt; boosting the money supply by 12.3% from January 2021 to April 2022; and holding the Fed funds rate around 0.08% until March 18, 2022, when the Fed raised it to a meager 0.33%.

The Fed’s target interest rate is now 4.33%, much higher than it has been at any other time in the 2000s except for the run-up to the Great Recession of 2008.

Punting responsibility

The central bank watched inflation soar during the Biden administration and wants to ensure that it does not recur. The Fed has used high interest rates and asset sales to tighten the money supply for three years now. Recent money supply growth has been lower than normal.

The federal budget has stabilized now, however, surprisingly running a slight surplus in June, which is relieving the main source of inflationary pressure. The surplus will undoubtedly prove temporary, but the lower-deficit trend will persist as long as economic growth continues and Congress does not increase spending any further: A growing economy provides greater tax revenues.

Powell is scuttling that plan by keeping interest rates too high. Instead of taking responsibility for the lingering effects of his inflationary Biden-assistance plan, Powell has been blaming tariffs and workers for the current slightly elevated inflation.

The Federal Reserve consistently sees low unemployment as bad news, assuming that it will bring on price inflation as workers demand higher wages, emboldened by a reduced fear of being stuck without a job. In addition, Powell argues that tariffs will increase inflation.

Both those notions ignore the simple fact that inflation is a general rise in prices, not price increases in specific sectors of the economy. If tariffs cause the prices of imported goods and some business inputs to rise, prices of other things must fall, unless someone increases the overall money supply — and that would have to be the Fed itself.

Similarly, if wages rise, it must be because productivity is increasing, or businesses would not be able to afford to pay higher wages — unless somebody increases the overall money supply, which again points to the Fed.

If businesses decide to pay the higher wages, even if output per worker is not rising and consumers continue to buy those items at the same rate, prices of other things must fall. Less money available for purchasing or investing in those other things means lower prices — unless the central bank increases the money supply.

Stalling Trump’s progress

Try as he might, Powell cannot exonerate the Fed for the struggles with inflation.

President Trump and congressional Republicans have rolled back the worst of the pandemic- and Biden-era fiscal and regulatory mayhem in addition to the sky-high inflation under the Biden-Harris administration — and the results are beginning to show. The U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly strong 3% annual rate in the second quarter, a clear, positive response to the tax cut extension and major deregulation over the past six months.

The recent extension of the 2017 tax cuts and the Trump administration’s rapid action to deregulate industry and energy will go far in reviving the economy, if given a chance. Unfortunately, the Fed seems determined to thwart a full recovery.

RELATED: Fed Chair Powell defies Trump, keeps interest rates unchanged despite good economic reports

Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Staff via Getty Images

“You do not see weakening in the labor market,” Powell said in his Wednesday press conference, two days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics documented that very weakness.

“Demand for workers is slowing, but so is the supply. … Wages are gradually cooling,” he continued.

We now know why wages have been cooling while the jobs market was strong: The jobs market was not strong. Powell and the Fed have been doing their best to stunt economic growth — and they are succeeding.

Stop the squeeze

All of this suggests that the Fed should reduce interest rates — gradually and with a keen eye monitoring the situation — to give the economy room to expand and take advantage of somewhat-improved federal fiscal, regulatory, and energy policies.

In addition, continuing the slow reduction of the central bank’s balance sheet, which the Fed’s governors nearly doubled in 2009 and foolishly ballooned during the second Obama administration and the pandemic, would continue to provide a brake on inflation without unduly stunting economic growth.

Though federal fiscal policy still needs serious reform — through substantial cuts in spending — squeezing the economy with tight money is certainly not the solution to our economic problems.

Scientific American pushes claims that science-based critiques of gender ideology are 'misinformation,' 'violence'



Gender ideologues have the Biden administration and multitudes of Democratic lawmakers across the country dutifully advancing their agenda and victimizing multitudes of Americans, but apparently that's not enough. They also appear keen to have the broader public buy into their narrative around sex, genital mutilations, and transgenderism.

In an effort to overcome or at the very least sidestep the common citizen's common sense, social constructivists have in recent decades attempted to mask their reality-defying philosophy in the language of science.

The trouble with this effort is that when exposed to actual scientific scrutiny, their claims have altogether failed to hold water. That has become especially clear in recent months where even Britain's National Health Service has pumped the brakes on so-called "gender-affirming care."

Faced with the collapse of their narrative, ideologues have worked to villainize critics and to reframe the debate about gender. On Friday, one such attempt was made in the pages of Scientific American, a 178-year-old science magazine published by the German-British Springer Nature Group.

Scientific American published an interview that originally appeared in OpenMind Magazine — former Discover magazine editor in chief Corey Powell's outlet that supposedly tackles "disinformation" in science.

The interview, originally made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Center's aptly titled "Truth Decay" initiative, comprises an engagement between Powell and two transvestites, both of whom are self-identified activists: a French-Canadian man who calls himself Florence Ashley and describes himself as a "transfeminine activist, academic, and slut"; and Simon Dow-Kuang Sun, a senior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago.

Blaze News previously reported that Ashley, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in Canada, wrote that where confused kids are concerned, "Unbounded social transition and ready access to puberty blockers ought to be treated as the default option, and support should be offered to parents who may have difficulty accepting their youth."

He claimed in an article for the leftist blog Truthout that efforts to protect children from irreversible puberty blockers, genital mutilations, and LGBT propaganda are "rooted in racism and white supremacy."

Ashley has also called for the decriminalization of rape by fraud, particularly in cases in which a transvestite has sex with a victim without indicating he isn't actually a woman as advertised.

Sun, unlike Ashley, actually has credentials as a scientist and has studied neuroplasticity. However, the credibility of his scientific declarations concerning gender ideology may not altogether be scientific.

In an article he co-authored last year with Ashley, Sun declared there is "no such thing as a male or female brain." Just months later, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science revealed that a group of Stanford Medicine researchers identified "highly replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization localized to the default mode network, striatum, and limbic network."

The framing of the interview in Scientific American made clear that science would be taking a back seat and that the aim was political.

Powell's interview is prefaced with the following statement: "In 2023 alone, more than 500 anti-trans bills were proposed or adopted in nearly every state in the United States, targeting everything from drag performances to gender-affirming medical care to school inclusion policies for trans people. Support for these measures has been enabled and propelled by scientific misinformation, which has proven to be a distressingly effective tool in outraging a public that might otherwise be broadly empathetic, or at least uncertain about where to stand."

After recycling the suggestion that the science informing legislation against sex change mutilations is "disinformation," Scientific American recirculated the suggestion by Sun that the notion there are "just two sexes" — characterized in the piece as "sex essentialism" — is "completely wrong about the biology of how sex characteristics arise."

"The error is simply that the gametes are a determining factor of sex — that once you know what gametes a person produces, that's their sex and nothing about it can change," claimed Sun. "But biology is a dynamic system where an organism starts in a particular state and grows through life and through development with multiple systems interacting. That is, more precisely, how sex works. Sex essentialism boils all that down to one, immutable characteristic to preclude transness as a biological phenomenon."

Ashley chimed in, saying, "The people who use ideas about biological sex against trans people are first appealing to the idea of biology as a description of difference, but then they do a jump and use that conception of biology as a form of meaning. The thing is, we organize society around meaning, not difference. Biology at its core can't tell you what matters to human organizations."

"We should really be asking what we care about, and then look to see if biology has anything to say about it. If you go through that exercise, then you realize that biology really has very little, if not virtually nothing, to say about things like trans rights," added Ashley.

The Canadian activist went on to intimate that when a scientist interprets empirical results in a way that hurts the transgender narrative, he or she is committing "epistemological violence."

"Epistemological violence occurs when a researcher or somebody else interprets empirical results in a way that devalues, pathologizes, or harms a marginalized group, even though there are equally good or better explanations for the same data," said Ashley.

Ashley then noted in the interview, "We should try to interpret the data in a way that's compatible with their inclusion and well-being, if that's an equally good interpretation."

The interview concluded with a call for shutting down undesirable speech.

"Shut down misinformation and hate when you see it crop up around you," Ashley told Powell. "Oftentimes we don't like confrontation, so we just let misinformation go. We need people to start speaking up whenever it comes up. And be loud. We’re in an ecosystem where the anti-trans voices are trying to portray themselves as speaking for a silent majority. We need people to be loud enough to counter any impression of a silent majority.

While Scientific American claims it is "committed to sharing trustworthy knowledge" and "enhancing our understanding," it has also indicated it is committed to "advancing social justice." It appears these commitments are not equally weighted.

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Fed chair Jerome Powell says government is on 'unsustainable fiscal path'



Federal Reserve Chair System board of governors chair Jerome Powell noted during an interview for "60 Minutes" that in the long term, the government is on an "unsustainable fiscal path," which he explained "means that the debt is growing faster than the economy."

Interviewer Scott Pelley suggested that Powell is worried about the issue.

"Over the long run, of course it does," Powell said, acknowledging his concern. He noted that "effectively we're borrowing from future generations."

According to fiscaldata.treasury.gov, the country's national debt is currently more than $34.1 trillion.

Powell said regarding staples such as bread, milk, and eggs, "Prices are substantially higher than they were before the pandemic," adding, "we think that's a big reason why people ... have been relatively dissatisfied with what is otherwise a pretty good economy."

In a post on X, Peter Schiff declared, "When it comes to our dire fiscal situation, #Powell is wrong. We're not just on an unsustainable path. We've already arrived at an unsustainable destination. As with Wile E. Coyote, we've already run past the edge of the fiscal cliff. It's just that we haven't looked down yet."

Some U.S. lawmakers have been sounding the alarm about the country's ever-expanding debt.

"Our deteriorating fiscal health and our ballooning national debt pose the greatest threat to American economic security," GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa declared in a social media post. "Our national debt is over $34 trillion. We need to stop borrowing money from our enemies, stop printing money out of thin air, and stop spending money that we don't have," he had noted in another post.

"Reminder: the U.S. is over $34.1 TRILLION in national debt. Our country cannot continue down this debt death spiral," GOP Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina noted.

— (@)

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Trump's ex-lawyer, Sidney Powell, just released the kraken by pleading guilty in Georgia case



Sidney Powell has just sent a shock wave through America.

Powell, whom Sara Gonzales calls the “most outspoken one” regarding election fraud, pleaded guilty to six criminal counts in a deal with the Fulton County prosecutors that gave her a reduced sentence and no jail time.

Just a couple of years ago, Powell is recorded telling a Fox News host that “there needs to be a massive criminal investigation, and it’s going to affect millions of voters in elections, and it’s been organized and conducted with the help of Silicon Valley people, the big tech companies, the social media companies, and even the media companies.”

“And,” Powell continued, “I’m going to release the kraken.”

“Well, that never happened,” Gonzales says.

“You have to wonder what she gave in exchange for that reduced sentence.”

BlazeTV contributor Jaco Booyens is “surprised” but notes that she’s also been sued by Dominion “for something insane like $3 billion, which they know she can’t pay.”

Booyens believes this is “a victory for the other side,” because “now what does Jenna Ellis do in this situation? What does Rudy do?”

Pat Gray is also surprised.

“I thought she was going to produce something, you know, the smoking gun, and then she had nothing,” Gray says, adding, “I’m surprised that you were so emphatic and then it was a lie.”

Meanwhile, Douglass Mackey has been sentenced to seven months in prison after being found guilty of election interference because he made a meme about Hillary Clinton.

The meme featured the slogan “Vote for Hillary” and directions to “avoid the line, vote from home” by texting the word “Hillary” to 59925.

“I mean they’re literally throwing people in prison for memes,” Gonzales says.


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Fed head suggests additional interest rate hikes will ultimately produce the lesser of two pains



On Friday at the Kansas Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming, Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, indicated that the Fed would continue raising interest rates in hopes of precluding price increases from becoming permanent. The intimation that interest rates will continue to go up triggered share prices around the world to dip.

In his speech, Powell suggested the forces that will ultimately bring down the present decades-high inflation — "higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions" — are "unfortunate costs" that will "bring some pain to households and businesses." Nevertheless, he argued, "a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain."

Powell cautioned that "reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth" and that interest rates will remain at levels that will slow the economy "for some time."

Kathy Jones, the chief fixed-income strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, explained the result of higher interest rates to the New York Times thusly: "By raising rates, the Fed is trying to make you slow down your spending. That happens when the cost of money goes up for a car loan or mortgage or something else you want to spend money on. At some point, you’re going to pull back."

By reducing Americans' buying power, the Fed is prompting consumers to buy less. Less demand might allow for supply to catch up and price increases to slow down.

In its last four meetings, the Fed rapidly lifted interest rates by two whole percentage points, from near zero in March to within a range of 2.25% to 2.5%, to deal with inflation, which in the neighborhood of 8.5%.

Powell did not specify in his speech how large a rate hike the Fed will announce at its September meeting or how long the rates will remain at these levels.

Whereas Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he favors a 50-basis-point hike at the Fed's next meeting, in his speech, Powell referenced his July statement that another 75-basis-point increase "could be appropriate at our next meeting."

Some believe the Fed's "forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand" may result in a recession.

Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research, suggested the "likelihood of recession is rising, because that's the solution to the inflation problem."

Desmond Lachman, an economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote on Wednesday that the "Fed is maintaining this hawkish posture even though the economy has contracted in two successive quarters" while "turning a blind eye to the strong deflationary forces emanating from abroad as a result of the rapidly deteriorating state of the world economy."

Despite optimism from Fed chair Jerome Powell, many still believe recession is likely



Many economists have not been persuaded by the optimistic rhetoric regarding the future of the American economy. In fact, most believe that if a recession hits, it will come either next year or perhaps in the fourth quarter of this year.

A survey by the Financial Times — cited by NASDAQ, the Washington Examiner, and others — shows that 70% of respondents believe that the recession will hit sometime between October 2022 and December 2023.

Respondents to the survey include experts from Harvard, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, and Notre Dame.

Though the survey is slightly misleading since it presumes that a recession is imminent, it still indicates that many economists are much more dour about the economy than the government officials charged with moderating and stabilizing it.

Earlier this week at the annual European Central Bank forum, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell insisted that the outlook for the American economy remains bright.

"The U.S. economy is in pretty strong shape," Powell said, citing overall household savings and low rates of default from average businesses.

When pressed about recent interest rate hikes, Powell still expressed confidence: "Overall, the U.S. economy is well positioned to withstand tighter monetary policy."

However, Emma Newbery of the Motley Fool compared the attempt to curtail inflation using interest rate hikes to "walking a tightrope."

"On the one hand, it could cause a recession. But on the other hand, if it can't get inflation down, the economic situation could be even worse further down the road," Newbery says.

Zachary Halaschak of the Washington Examiner likewise notes that slower spending brought on by higher interest rates "could cause economic growth to stagnate."

But Powell believes the moves are worth the risk: "Is there a risk that we would go too far [with rate hikes]? Certainly there’s a risk. But I wouldn’t agree that that is the biggest risk to the economy. The bigger mistake to make would be to fail to restore price stability."

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seems to agree. Last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Yellen said, "Chair Powell has said that his goal is to bring inflation down while maintaining a strong labor market. That's going to take skill and luck, but I believe it's possible.

"I don't think a recession is inevitable," she noted.

In the event that Yellen, Powell, and others are wrong, there are steps people can take now to mitigate some of the effects of economic recession, including increasing savings and paying down high-interest debts.

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates another half-point in early July. The three-quarter-point raise this month was the highest single rate increase in nearly 30 years.

The Federal Reserve is on track to raise interest rates in mid-March



Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell believes that the Fed is on track to raise interest rates in mid-March.

“Making appropriate monetary policy in this environment requires a recognition that the economy evolves in unexpected ways. We will need to be nimble in responding to incoming data and the evolving outlook,” Powell said in prepared testimony before Congress.

Powell said that it was too soon to tell how the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent sanctions on Russia issued by Western nations, could affect the U.S. economy, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The chairman’s remarks highlight the delicate economic climate that the Federal Reserve must navigate as it raises interest rates for the first time since 2018 amid rapid inflation that could be further exasperated in response to Western sanctions on Russia.

He said, “The near-term effects on the U.S. economy of the invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing war, the sanctions, and of events to come, remain highly uncertain.”

It’s typically unusual for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates during times of geopolitical conflict. That said, the Fed is under increased pressure to raise rates since inflation is running far above the Fed’s 2% target and Western sanctions on Russia stand to further raise prices.

In late February, allied leaders of Western nations issued a joint statement expressing their intentions to restrict Russian access to the SWIFT telecommunications network.

In the statement, Western leaders from the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States said, “As Russian forces unleash their assault on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities we are resolved to continue imposing costs on Russia that will further isolate Russia from the international financial system and our economies.”

Targeting the Russian financial sector, oligarchs, and the Russian central bank with these sanctions will economically isolate Russia and make international commerce extremely difficult for the country.

Similar to previous spikes in inflation being caused by supply chain shortages and difficulty importing goods, Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve believe that the extra duress put on international trade as a result of these sanctions will cause prices to further to inflate for American consumers.

“We are attentive to the risks of potential further upward pressure on inflation expectations and inflation itself from a number of factors. We will use our policy tools as appropriate to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched,” Powell said.

'Kraken on steroids': Sidney Powell releases statement after getting dropped from Trump legal team

“I understand today’s press release,” Powell wrote.

Trump's legal team distances itself from Sidney Powell in new statement

President Donald Trump's legal team issued a statement, Sunday, distancing itself from attorney Sidney Powell,